Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I am so pleased to welcome backto the show Corey DeAngelis. I haven't
had Corey on for a little while. He is arguably the nation's leading expert
in and supporter of school choice.He's a senior Fellow at the American Federation
for Children and executive director at theEducational Freedom Institute, and a scholar at
(00:20):
the Cato Institute. You get theidea. This guy understands the issues of
school choice more than anybody I know. And I don't spend a ton of
time talking about politics in other states, but the politics of school choice within
the Republican Party in Texas is reallyreally interesting. Right. Normally you think
(00:43):
of Republicans mostly in favor of schoolchoice and Democrats mostly opposed because Democrats are
a wholly owned subsidiary of the Teachers'union. And yet in Texas, school
choice stuff has been has been defeatedwith publican participation. So joining us to
talk about why that has happened andwhat he hopes to happen today in Texas's
(01:07):
Super Tuesday voting the man himself,Corey DeAngelis, Hey, Corey, Hey
Ross, thanks for having me sofirst, Did I say anything wrong?
No? I think you're absolutely right. And in Texas it's only a problem
in the House. In the Senate, the Republicans easily passed the school choice
bill last year eighteen to thirteen,with only one Republican affection. In other
(01:30):
states, this hasn't been a problem. Arizona had all Republicans vote in favor
of their universal school choice bill intwenty twenty two. They had one seat
GOP majorities, and they were ableto get it done. In North Carolina,
every single Republican signed on to theirbill to advance universal school choice as
well. And now we have tenstates total, all red states, that
(01:51):
have universal school choice. So thisis a Republican party platform issue. It
has been supported on the ballot inTexas in twenty twenty two by eighty eight
percent of Texas Republican primary voters.It has really become a conservative, a
GOP litmus test issue. But inthe Texas House, you had a couple
dozen, almost a couple dozen Republicanstwenty one voting with all the Democrats last
(02:15):
year to block school choice after itpassed the Senate. And the reason that
happened is because the teachers unions aredumb. In a lot of ways they
advanced policies that hurt kids and don'treally help teachers all that much either.
But they're smart politically. Sometimes inTexas and in deep red states, they
know they're not going to get aDemocrat majority, so they start to play
(02:38):
very heavily in Republican primaries to pickoff just enough to block school choice in
at least one chamber. They've donethat in the Texas House, and the
guys who all vote against school choice, all but one of them. They
were previously endorsed by the state affiliateof the NEA, the largest teachers union
in the country, and a bunchof them last election cycle were actually endorsed
(03:00):
by Randy Winingartens Union, the AmericanFederation and Teachers until they started to find
out that it's kind of icky forRepublicans to be associated with Randy Winegarten,
so they didn't endorse any of theRepublicans this year formally, but behind closed
doors privately, they're in meetings tellingtheir members that they're phone banking for Republicans
(03:22):
in Texas who voted against school choice, and they also funded them through a
pack called Defend Rural Texas Pack,which is actually set up in Austin,
Texas not a rural location, andso they're indirectly funding them their phone banking
for them privately, but then publiclythey're only endorsing Democrats. They endorse seventy
(03:42):
seven people this year, only Democrats. And so, but the argument you'll
hear ross as to why they canhave their cake and need it too,
they're still Republicans while voting at thetheir own party platforms. They'll say,
hey, look, I'm in arural area. As if other states don't
have rural areas. Florida has versalschool choice or rural areas. West Virginia
has universal school choice, much morerural state than Texas. But what they'll
(04:05):
try to say, and they'll tryto use logic, but it has nothing
to do with that. They'll tryto say, look, we don't have
a lot of choices in my ruralareas, so we only have one option.
It's the fantastic rural public school.But then the next breath they'll try
to say the same teacher union talkingpoint that this is going to defund our
fantastic rural public school. But ifthat's true, that there's no exit options,
(04:28):
you're not going to lose any moneyat all. Both of those things
can't be true at the same time. If no one's going to leave your
public school because there's no other options, you're not going to have a destruction
of your public school. And bythe way, if it's so great,
if it's actually fantastic, you shouldn'tbe worried at all. So this is
really just a convenient excuse for thepeople who are already backed by the teacher
(04:49):
unions in the first place. Theseare the guys that are also vote with
Democrats more than anybody else in theTexas houses as well. So tonight there's
a school choice showdown. Six Tinathem that are running for reelection. The
other five saw the writing on thewall and they retired. But the sixteen
running for reelection all have primary opponentswho support school choice and Donald Trump,
(05:10):
Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, TedCruz. They're mostly aligned in all these
races supporting the school choice candidates.So there's a lot of momentum on the
side of education freedom and we'll seewhat happens later. Tonight we're talking with
Corey Deangelists, one of the nation'sleading experts on school choice. Follow them
on Twitter at Diangelis Corey, that'sco R. E. Y for his
(05:31):
first first name. I want togo back to something you said a moment
ago. You talked about it beingikey, the relationship between the teachers unions
and the Republicans. So what Iwas unclear on did did the teachers unions
decide that their people thought it wasikey for them to be endorsing Republicans?
Did those Republicans decide that it wasikey for them to be endorsed by the
(05:58):
teachers' unions? Which are I mean, I've long said on the show,
Corey that there is there is nomore evil yet somehow socially acceptable force in
America than the teachers' unions, right, So, putting aside stuff like terrorism
and whatever, the teachers' unions aretrue evil, harmful, terrible. So
(06:18):
who thought it was icky? It'sboth, It goes both ways, and
it's happened privately. I actually gotinto one of the a couple of the
teachers union meetings this year in Texasthrough zoom. They're not very good at
their security, but they had oneof their lead digital organizers I forget her
named Danielle I think it was shewas admitting that she was going into the
(06:39):
Republican primaries and she felt like ashamedof herself. I shared the video on
Twitter. You can find it later. But she was ashamed of herself for
doing so. But the poll worker, who she knew from the Democratic Party
winked at her and pointed her tothe Republican ballot because in Texas we have
something called open primaries. So whatthe Democratic Teachers Union members do is they
(06:59):
vote for the Rhinos in the primariesand then they switched in the general election,
They'll go and vote for Joe Biden. So you don't have to register
with your party inventions. So theydo a lot of this encouraging crossover in
the primaries because Texas is a redstate and so and you also have Ken
Paxson has sued a bunch of theschool districts, at least six of them
(07:20):
this year. Already for legally electioneering, you're not allowed to use public resources
to advocate or to pressure employees atschool districts to vote one way or the
other. But we have a lotof examples of that happening this year.
But it's also on the other side. The conservatives have seen as conservative voters
(07:40):
in particular they're highly supportive of schoolchoice, it's on the Republican party platform,
and they know that the teachers unionsare pushing Black lives matter at school,
they're pushing the gender ideology into theclassroom. They fought to keep the
schools closed as long as possible,and they're just in general aligned with Parenthood
(08:01):
and other leftist radical groups. Sothe Conservatives, I think they started to
see that the teachers union endorsement hasbecome a political kiss of death or Republicans,
and so this year none of themare bragging about teachers union endorsements in
twenty twenty four. So you wentfrom twenty twenty two where you had a
whole bunch of the Republicans supported bythe teacher unions publicly to now seventy seven
(08:26):
endorsements from them, all to Democrats. And now we're finding information that they're
doing it privately. So they knowthat this is hurting the Republicans to be
associated with them, but they stillwant those Republicans to win in the primary
because they are the less conservative option. So what they're doing is they're doing
(08:46):
things behind closed doors. They're behavingin a slimy manner. But thankfully we
have social media now where if wefind video evidence or audio evidence of them
pushing their members to vote for theRhinos, we can expose that. And
that's that's what I've done this year. Are they are the teachers unions still
donating money to the Republican candidates,not directly, but as I mentioned earlier,
(09:11):
we have the Defend Rural Texas packin Texas. It's set up in
Austin, not a rural play,so it's it's just a phony pack they
set up to try to defend thesemembers. And you have the Texas affiliate
of Randy Weingarton's Junior AFT giving thema bunch of money, and they're given
money to Republicans. And then TonyKinnett over at The Daily Signal did a
(09:33):
great report on this. How indeep red states like Texas historically and in
places like Idaho as well, youhave in Tennessee, you have the teachers
unions playing heavily in Republican primaries,but it has become the political kiss of
death in places like Tennessee too.In twenty twenty two, actually ten of
(09:54):
the Republicans in the House were thatwere running in the primaries were in are
funded by the Teachers Union, theTEA, the Tennessee Education Association, the
state affiliate at the NEA. Wellnine of them lost their primers. So
there, I mean, and sonow you have in twenty twenty four.
I think the Republicans are running awayfrom that association with that radical leftist group.
(10:20):
Well, and they should, Imean, I think my disappointment is
that they were able to get awaywith it at all, because school choice
has been one of the top thingsfor Republicans for some time now, in
part due to all your work,but for at least a couple of presidentials,
you know, for at least maybeeight years, ten years, maybe
a little more, school choice hasbeen a big thing. So it's kind
of shocking that these kind of ruralTexas Republicans have been able to get away
(10:43):
with this. Somebody told me thatone of the leaders of those what you
call rhinos opponents of school choice inTexas, is married to a school district
to public school district superintendent I think, or principal or something. So there's
like, well, I can't voteagainst my wife. Well, either change
your party or you should retire.And look the five guys who retired.
(11:05):
They must have saw the writing onthe Wall sawid they were going to lose
and have Abbott going against them anda bunch of the other high profile figures.
But if you think about it,all those open seats were expecting to
be pickup votes for school choice.So what does that tell you? The
tide is turning even in these openseats towards education freedom. In Texas,
(11:26):
they had school choice on the ballotin twenty eighteen and in twenty twenty two,
well, the support surged from seventynine percent to eighty eight percent support
among Republican primary voters, so thishas become a very highly supported issue.
There was also a poll by theUniversity of Houston that came out last month,
and this isn't you know, aconservative outlet, This is the University
(11:48):
of Houston system, And it wasreported by the Texas Tribune that one of
the main main findings there, whichis another left wing source, that the
Republican primary voters polled, said thatsixty percent of them would be less likely
to vote for a candidate if theyvoted against school choice in the UM primary,
and only sixteen percent said the opposite. So all of this information shows
(12:13):
bad news for the incumbents. Whovoted against their constituents and parental rights and
education, and it's good news forfamilies who want more of a say in
their own kids education. And guesswhat, sixteen of them are up for
reelection. We only need to winhalf of them to entirely change the dynamic
of the Texas House. We werethirteen votes short last year. Five of
(12:39):
them are retiring, so we haveabout eight more votes that we need.
Sixteen of them are facing reelection thatvoted against school choice. That means we
need to win half of those races. But remember in Texas, if you
win first place in your primary,you might have to still go to a
runoff if you don't get fifty percentof the vote, if there's three or
four people in the race, andso some of these we might win tonight.
(13:00):
I think we are going to wina few of them, but then
a bunch of them might go torunoffs as well. So this fight isn't
going to be over after tonight.Coriny Angeles, PhD is Executive director at
the Educational Freedom Institute and Senior Fellowat the American Federation for Children. Thanks
for your time, Corey. Alwaysgreat to talk to you. Absolutely,
thank you so much for us,all right, see ya
I am so pleased to welcome backto the show Corey DeAngelis. I haven't
had Corey on for a little while. He is arguably the nation's leading expert
in and supporter of school choice.He's a senior Fellow at the American Federation
for Children and executive director at theEducational Freedom Institute, and a scholar at
(00:20):
the Cato Institute. You get theidea. This guy understands the issues of
school choice more than anybody I know. And I don't spend a ton of
time talking about politics in other states, but the politics of school choice within
the Republican Party in Texas is reallyreally interesting. Right. Normally you think
(00:43):
of Republicans mostly in favor of schoolchoice and Democrats mostly opposed because Democrats are
a wholly owned subsidiary of the Teachers'union. And yet in Texas, school
choice stuff has been has been defeatedwith publican participation. So joining us to
talk about why that has happened andwhat he hopes to happen today in Texas's
(01:07):
Super Tuesday voting the man himself,Corey DeAngelis, Hey, Corey, Hey
Ross, thanks for having me sofirst, Did I say anything wrong?
No? I think you're absolutely right. And in Texas it's only a problem
in the House. In the Senate, the Republicans easily passed the school choice
bill last year eighteen to thirteen,with only one Republican affection. In other
(01:30):
states, this hasn't been a problem. Arizona had all Republicans vote in favor
of their universal school choice bill intwenty twenty two. They had one seat
GOP majorities, and they were ableto get it done. In North Carolina,
every single Republican signed on to theirbill to advance universal school choice as
well. And now we have tenstates total, all red states, that
(01:51):
have universal school choice. So thisis a Republican party platform issue. It
has been supported on the ballot inTexas in twenty twenty two by eighty eight
percent of Texas Republican primary voters.It has really become a conservative, a
GOP litmus test issue. But inthe Texas House, you had a couple
dozen, almost a couple dozen Republicanstwenty one voting with all the Democrats last
(02:15):
year to block school choice after itpassed the Senate. And the reason that
happened is because the teachers unions aredumb. In a lot of ways they
advanced policies that hurt kids and don'treally help teachers all that much either.
But they're smart politically. Sometimes inTexas and in deep red states, they
know they're not going to get aDemocrat majority, so they start to play
(02:38):
very heavily in Republican primaries to pickoff just enough to block school choice in
at least one chamber. They've donethat in the Texas House, and the
guys who all vote against school choice, all but one of them. They
were previously endorsed by the state affiliateof the NEA, the largest teachers union
in the country, and a bunchof them last election cycle were actually endorsed
(03:00):
by Randy Winingartens Union, the AmericanFederation and Teachers until they started to find
out that it's kind of icky forRepublicans to be associated with Randy Winegarten,
so they didn't endorse any of theRepublicans this year formally, but behind closed
doors privately, they're in meetings tellingtheir members that they're phone banking for Republicans
(03:22):
in Texas who voted against school choice, and they also funded them through a
pack called Defend Rural Texas Pack,which is actually set up in Austin,
Texas not a rural location, andso they're indirectly funding them their phone banking
for them privately, but then publiclythey're only endorsing Democrats. They endorse seventy
(03:42):
seven people this year, only Democrats. And so, but the argument you'll
hear ross as to why they canhave their cake and need it too,
they're still Republicans while voting at thetheir own party platforms. They'll say,
hey, look, I'm in arural area. As if other states don't
have rural areas. Florida has versalschool choice or rural areas. West Virginia
has universal school choice, much morerural state than Texas. But what they'll
(04:05):
try to say, and they'll tryto use logic, but it has nothing
to do with that. They'll tryto say, look, we don't have
a lot of choices in my ruralareas, so we only have one option.
It's the fantastic rural public school.But then the next breath they'll try
to say the same teacher union talkingpoint that this is going to defund our
fantastic rural public school. But ifthat's true, that there's no exit options,
(04:28):
you're not going to lose any moneyat all. Both of those things
can't be true at the same time. If no one's going to leave your
public school because there's no other options, you're not going to have a destruction
of your public school. And bythe way, if it's so great,
if it's actually fantastic, you shouldn'tbe worried at all. So this is
really just a convenient excuse for thepeople who are already backed by the teacher
(04:49):
unions in the first place. Theseare the guys that are also vote with
Democrats more than anybody else in theTexas houses as well. So tonight there's
a school choice showdown. Six Tinathem that are running for reelection. The
other five saw the writing on thewall and they retired. But the sixteen
running for reelection all have primary opponentswho support school choice and Donald Trump,
(05:10):
Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, TedCruz. They're mostly aligned in all these
races supporting the school choice candidates.So there's a lot of momentum on the
side of education freedom and we'll seewhat happens later. Tonight we're talking with
Corey Deangelists, one of the nation'sleading experts on school choice. Follow them
on Twitter at Diangelis Corey, that'sco R. E. Y for his
(05:31):
first first name. I want togo back to something you said a moment
ago. You talked about it beingikey, the relationship between the teachers unions
and the Republicans. So what Iwas unclear on did did the teachers unions
decide that their people thought it wasikey for them to be endorsing Republicans?
Did those Republicans decide that it wasikey for them to be endorsed by the
(05:58):
teachers' unions? Which are I mean, I've long said on the show,
Corey that there is there is nomore evil yet somehow socially acceptable force in
America than the teachers' unions, right, So, putting aside stuff like terrorism
and whatever, the teachers' unions aretrue evil, harmful, terrible. So
(06:18):
who thought it was icky? It'sboth, It goes both ways, and
it's happened privately. I actually gotinto one of the a couple of the
teachers union meetings this year in Texasthrough zoom. They're not very good at
their security, but they had oneof their lead digital organizers I forget her
named Danielle I think it was shewas admitting that she was going into the
(06:39):
Republican primaries and she felt like ashamedof herself. I shared the video on
Twitter. You can find it later. But she was ashamed of herself for
doing so. But the poll worker, who she knew from the Democratic Party
winked at her and pointed her tothe Republican ballot because in Texas we have
something called open primaries. So whatthe Democratic Teachers Union members do is they
(06:59):
vote for the Rhinos in the primariesand then they switched in the general election,
They'll go and vote for Joe Biden. So you don't have to register
with your party inventions. So theydo a lot of this encouraging crossover in
the primaries because Texas is a redstate and so and you also have Ken
Paxson has sued a bunch of theschool districts, at least six of them
(07:20):
this year. Already for legally electioneering, you're not allowed to use public resources
to advocate or to pressure employees atschool districts to vote one way or the
other. But we have a lotof examples of that happening this year.
But it's also on the other side. The conservatives have seen as conservative voters
(07:40):
in particular they're highly supportive of schoolchoice, it's on the Republican party platform,
and they know that the teachers unionsare pushing Black lives matter at school,
they're pushing the gender ideology into theclassroom. They fought to keep the
schools closed as long as possible,and they're just in general aligned with Parenthood
(08:01):
and other leftist radical groups. Sothe Conservatives, I think they started to
see that the teachers union endorsement hasbecome a political kiss of death or Republicans,
and so this year none of themare bragging about teachers union endorsements in
twenty twenty four. So you wentfrom twenty twenty two where you had a
whole bunch of the Republicans supported bythe teacher unions publicly to now seventy seven
(08:26):
endorsements from them, all to Democrats. And now we're finding information that they're
doing it privately. So they knowthat this is hurting the Republicans to be
associated with them, but they stillwant those Republicans to win in the primary
because they are the less conservative option. So what they're doing is they're doing
(08:46):
things behind closed doors. They're behavingin a slimy manner. But thankfully we
have social media now where if wefind video evidence or audio evidence of them
pushing their members to vote for theRhinos, we can expose that. And
that's that's what I've done this year. Are they are the teachers unions still
donating money to the Republican candidates,not directly, but as I mentioned earlier,
(09:11):
we have the Defend Rural Texas packin Texas. It's set up in
Austin, not a rural play,so it's it's just a phony pack they
set up to try to defend thesemembers. And you have the Texas affiliate
of Randy Weingarton's Junior AFT giving thema bunch of money, and they're given
money to Republicans. And then TonyKinnett over at The Daily Signal did a
(09:33):
great report on this. How indeep red states like Texas historically and in
places like Idaho as well, youhave in Tennessee, you have the teachers
unions playing heavily in Republican primaries,but it has become the political kiss of
death in places like Tennessee too.In twenty twenty two, actually ten of
(09:54):
the Republicans in the House were thatwere running in the primaries were in are
funded by the Teachers Union, theTEA, the Tennessee Education Association, the
state affiliate at the NEA. Wellnine of them lost their primers. So
there, I mean, and sonow you have in twenty twenty four.
I think the Republicans are running awayfrom that association with that radical leftist group.
(10:20):
Well, and they should, Imean, I think my disappointment is
that they were able to get awaywith it at all, because school choice
has been one of the top thingsfor Republicans for some time now, in
part due to all your work,but for at least a couple of presidentials,
you know, for at least maybeeight years, ten years, maybe
a little more, school choice hasbeen a big thing. So it's kind
of shocking that these kind of ruralTexas Republicans have been able to get away
(10:43):
with this. Somebody told me thatone of the leaders of those what you
call rhinos opponents of school choice inTexas, is married to a school district
to public school district superintendent I think, or principal or something. So there's
like, well, I can't voteagainst my wife. Well, either change
your party or you should retire.And look the five guys who retired.
(11:05):
They must have saw the writing onthe Wall sawid they were going to lose
and have Abbott going against them anda bunch of the other high profile figures.
But if you think about it,all those open seats were expecting to
be pickup votes for school choice.So what does that tell you? The
tide is turning even in these openseats towards education freedom. In Texas,
(11:26):
they had school choice on the ballotin twenty eighteen and in twenty twenty two,
well, the support surged from seventynine percent to eighty eight percent support
among Republican primary voters, so thishas become a very highly supported issue.
There was also a poll by theUniversity of Houston that came out last month,
and this isn't you know, aconservative outlet, This is the University
(11:48):
of Houston system, And it wasreported by the Texas Tribune that one of
the main main findings there, whichis another left wing source, that the
Republican primary voters polled, said thatsixty percent of them would be less likely
to vote for a candidate if theyvoted against school choice in the UM primary,
and only sixteen percent said the opposite. So all of this information shows
(12:13):
bad news for the incumbents. Whovoted against their constituents and parental rights and
education, and it's good news forfamilies who want more of a say in
their own kids education. And guesswhat, sixteen of them are up for
reelection. We only need to winhalf of them to entirely change the dynamic
of the Texas House. We werethirteen votes short last year. Five of
(12:39):
them are retiring, so we haveabout eight more votes that we need.
Sixteen of them are facing reelection thatvoted against school choice. That means we
need to win half of those races. But remember in Texas, if you
win first place in your primary,you might have to still go to a
runoff if you don't get fifty percentof the vote, if there's three or
four people in the race, andso some of these we might win tonight.
(13:00):
I think we are going to wina few of them, but then
a bunch of them might go torunoffs as well. So this fight isn't
going to be over after tonight.Coriny Angeles, PhD is Executive director at
the Educational Freedom Institute and Senior Fellowat the American Federation for Children. Thanks
for your time, Corey. Alwaysgreat to talk to you. Absolutely,
thank you so much for us,all right, see ya
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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